4
Van Winkle’s turned out to be a seedy dive bar, covered from ceiling to floor in stickers for punk rock bands, half of which, William imagined, had long ago ceased to exist. There was a stage in the very back, and as he sat at the bar sipping a cup of burned coffee, he tried to imagine a teenage Irene, pink streaks in her hair, diving the stage. He imagined her there with a group of forgotten friends, on whose couches she’d once crashed, making the pilgrimage from wherever they’d come from originally to the anonymous Lower East Side, doing what she had to do to forget the home she’d left behind.
Not exactly eager to go back home (having now received a third message from his mother), William pulled out the address book and, feeling invigorated, began to dial.
First he tried someone named Geoffrey Irving, in Tarrytown, but he wasn’t available. According to his half brother, who answered the phone, Geoffrey was serving ten years in Sing Sing. Maybe he had known an Irene or a “Reeny” once, but William would have to go up there to ask him. He thought he probably would not. Instead he ordered a fresh coffee and asked the Cobalt 7 to look up Geoffrey Irving’s record, which seemed to involve stolen cars and an arrest in 2002, which was at least a year after Irene had ended up in Ithaca. In any case, he was their age and thus too young to be Irene’s father.
William moved on to Ed Simpson of St. Louis, Missouri, a retired train engineer who was happy to pause The Price Is Right to talk a moment. Mr. Simpson remembered a girl named Renee who had once dated his son, Ed Simpson, Jr., now Colonel Ed Simpson, Jr., presently off completing his third tour in Afghanistan. William thanked the man and asked him to thank his son for his service before moving on to the next name in the book.
No one picked up the phone at the home of Sally Paulson of Rochester, but when he looked her up on the Cobalt 7, he found a picture on the staff page of the Maquokeeta Farm in New Hope. He remembered Irene mentioning once working on a farm there. But Sally was African American and so probably not likely to be Irene’s mother.
He couldn’t get through to anyone at the number listed for Anthony Lemon, of Antwerp, Ohio. Then he had three more dead ends in a row with Evelyn Cross of Key West; Mary Winter of Mary Winter’s Garden Center in Houston; and finally Poppy Daniels (gender unknown) of West Virginia.
William was just about to give up and surrender to the fourth call from his mother, when he tried Mr. Bernard Wyckoff, of the Pruder Pools and Aquatic Center in nearby Brighton Beach, who picked up the phone and said that, yes, he had an outstanding order for someone named Irene Richmond, but he was going to need to come down and pick it up himself.
With no other leads, William gladly got into another cab by the bottom of Tompkins Square Park and headed for Brooklyn. On the way he, more reluctantly, decided to call his mother back to let her know he wasn’t dead, lest she start trying to send his own soul abroad.
She sounded strange when she answered. “William, I have to go. Something happened.”
“What is it? Is Dad okay?”
“Your father is fine.” There was a short silence. “Do you remember Chongso Kim?”
William vaguely recalled a pudgy eight-year-old from his father’s congregation, who had thrown up a metric ton of yellow cake at the Annunciation potluck luncheon.
“This morning he snuck out of his room to buy a comic book and was killed by a car crossing Northern Boulevard. Hit and run. Everyone here is very upset. I made sam gae tang to bring over to Mrs. Kim’s.”
William closed his eyes, feeling suddenly sick and trying not to imagine what it would be like to be out on the road in front of the cab he was in, hitting the front fender.
“God. That’s awful. I’m—so sorry. Please tell her I’m sorry.”
He knew his mother would be in a rush now, on her way to a room full of weeping women, carrying her big bowl of stew: Cornish hens stuffed with rice and chestnuts, in a ginseng and garlic broth. She’d add it to the mounting pile of Tupperware in the kitchen and then do what she could, perform the rituals that might comfort the grieving mother, finding the shadow of her son in the haze of incense.
“You didn’t come home last night?”
“Yeah, sorry. I’m—staying with friends in Manhattan. You remember George and Sara?”
Then his mother spoke softly. “She is lost on the road from This World to That World.”
“Who? Sara? No, she’s in the financial district.”
But his mother only said, “You call me back later,” and hung up.
5
William was a little surprised to find the Pruder Pools and Aquatic Center still open in February. Half the other stores along the seaside stretch that he’d walked down had been shuttered for the season. There were only three customers inside when William entered, under a thick yellow haze of cigarette smoke, which not even the chlorine in the air could mask. He approached the only person he could positively identify as an employee, a man whose face was hidden behind a massive, wiry white beard. He was sitting in a deck chair in the back sipping from an orange plastic mug that said LIFE’S A BEACH on the side and reading a historical thriller about the Civil War. When William introduced himself as a friend of Irene Richmond’s, the man extended his hand, then barked, “Aqualad?”
“Sorry?”
With a huge heave, the man rose up out of the deck chair—his giant hand setting down his book so as not to lose his place—and then shifted gears with a flickering smile.
“He’s in the original packaging. Near mint condition. I was going to just ship him, separate from the other stuff, but then her first check bounced and I never heard anything.”
Confused, William followed the man to a door on the side wall by the pool floats, marked PRIVATE, and opened it. Inside, the only light came from eerie, dim halogen spotlights above a long row of display cases. Neatly arranged inside were action figures and dolls of all sorts and sizes, still entombed in original packaging. Maybe a thousand caped, muscular superheroes. Lithe, peach-skinned Barbies. Original Raggedy Anns and Andys. Babies with porcelain faces and glass eyes behind lids that seemed to flutter. The six original American Girls in their boxes. Let us out, their tiny trapped faces seemed to implore.
Mr. Wyckoff tapped a heavy knuckle into one of the cases, at a figure of a boy wearing a tight orange shirt and impossibly tiny green swim trunks. Just like in the comics William had read as a child, he had deep, purple eyes. Aqualad, the packaging announced, Prince of Atlantis. In the background was a wide white beach, spotted with futuristic crystal towers and huge cliffs of diamond. “You’ll never destroy Hidden Valley, Garn Daanuth!” he declared in a flat white speech bubble. Endowed with the Martian power of the Metagene! the corny, 1970s-era packaging promised. What Martians had to do with Atlantis, William could not remember anymore.
“Like I told her, there’s a small crease on the corner of the package.”
William squinted but he barely saw this tiny imperfection. Before he could say anything, Bernard took the boxed figurine out of the case and handed it to him. William turned it over in his hands a moment before he realized it was for him. Right after they’d gotten back together he’d told her the whole story about the kimono and Mi-cha.
He noticed Bernard’s face was practically glowing, now that he was standing so close to the halogen lights. Cheeks, nose, forehead—all were blazing. Long jaggy capillaries branched like rivers. What’d they call that? Gin Blossoms. Like the band. He recalled the blotches Irene had sometimes gotten in harsh sun, or after a second drink, and once upon eating a strong vegetable curry. It started to get especially noticeable after the chemo. “Rosacea,” she had said. “Runs in the family.”
William took a deep breath and, keeping his eyes on the action figure, found the courage to ask, “What was the rest of the order? You said you sent Irene the rest already.”
“Yeah,” he said, “seventy-seven identical, unboxed Barbie dolls. Don’t know what the hell
she wanted to do with them.”
William’s heart pounded. He knew exactly what she had done with them. Slowly he thought he was beginning to understand. He turned to the man’s desk and saw a framed photo. There was the enormous, smiling Bernard with an arm around a tiny woman with dark short hair. They were in the stands at the racetrack, pointing excitedly to a picture of a chestnut-colored horse under a blanket of white carnations. They appeared to be celebrating a happy moment with a bottle of champagne.
“That’s my wife, Maggie,” Bernard said proudly, “just after I won five grand at the 2009 Belmont Stakes.”
William tried to look impressed. Beneath this were two school photographs, each taken against a familiar blue Sears background.
Mr. Wyckoff tapped the edge of the photo of a heavyset girl, maybe ten years old, with braces, hair back in a ponytail. “That’s Lorraine, my youngest. And here’s Greg. He’s three-A most outstanding wrestler, 2010 eighth-grade individual champion.”
William looked for any resemblance in Greg, whose buzzed hair did seem to be blond, but whose heavy jaw and high forehead looked nothing like Irene’s.
“Nice. Just the two kids?” William asked.
Did he detect a slight hesitation as Mr. Wyckoff turned to lock the display again?
“Well, Greg eats enough for three. And Lorraine’s sweet as a dozen daughters.”
“They must have had a good time, growing up with all these great toys.”
Now William saw clear displeasure in the man’s eyes. “These are not toys,” he said. “These are not to be played with. These are collectible figurines, for serious hobbyists only.”
William looked back up at the man. If he was Irene’s father, then in her final weeks of life, she’d conned him out of seventy-seven Barbie dolls, which she’d then melted onto a two-foot-section of an I-beam from the World Trade Center site. William thought, with all respect due to Skeevo, he would rather not punch him in the neck.
“So look. Let’s not have any trouble. You can pay me the full amount now, and we’ll be done with it. Like I said, the check she wrote bounced. I am this close to calling my lawyer.”
Maybe Irene had, in fact, been taunting Wyckoff. Hoping even that he or some lawyer would someday stumble upon the truth: that Irene was his daughter, and that she’d had the last laugh. William almost laughed himself. Talk about unfinished business. No wonder her soul wasn’t moving on! Then he remembered that this, of course, was totally insane.
And yet somehow he felt compelled to say what he said next: “Actually, she died.”
Bernard’s eyes widened, and then he groaned. “Just perfect.”
William took another deep breath, terrified but suddenly sure that this was why Irene had asked him to find her father. Just one second, and it would all be over.
“I think—sir, I’m sorry. But I think—I think she might have been your daughter.”
Bernard glanced at the photograph of Lorraine, then back at William, confused. “The hell are you talking about?”
“Did you—sorry, but did you ever have another daughter?”
The man’s red-veined face went white, and his lips seemed to move without orders. “Carrie Ann?”
“Carrie Ann?” William echoed.
And that was when he saw every red line on Bernard’s face tighten. William’s eyes shut in fear, and he tried to lurch toward the door. Then he felt a stone fist crushing into his temple, and his whole body twisted around. One foot lost contact with the floor, then the other. His uninjured eye opened to see the dolls in their glass prisons lurch and spin around until they were below him and the ground was above. His legs still kicked toward the door. There was a flash of white, blinding light, and then darkness everywhere, like deep, deep water.
6
William’s head ached, just above his eye, and his jaw was in agony. Had he actually been punched in the face? He had never been in a fight before, but he realized, slowly, that this was what had happened. And that now he was lying in the damp sand of a very cold beach. There was dried blood on his lip and all down his shirt. He vaguely recalled staggering out of the store, trying to get away from Mr. Wyckoff and then blacking out. Carrie Ann Wyckoff? He couldn’t seem to reconcile this. It couldn’t be her name. Faintly he could hear the voice of the Cobalt 7 inside his pocket, and he pulled it out to find its screen badly cracked.
Hello. Where can I guide you today? it asked, over and over in a woman’s pleasant voice.
For a while William cried without getting up or moving. Everything hurt, and worse, he couldn’t feel her anywhere anymore. What was there left to do now but go home? Allow this defeat to mark the beginning of the rest of the long defeat of his life. Alone and in ten kinds of pain.
Then he noticed he wasn’t exactly alone. He had, apparently, escaped the store still clutching the Aqualad package, which now lay a few feet away in the damp sand. He studied bright blocky colors of another age, the vaguely homoerotic outfitting, and the cheesy fists-on-hips posture of a teenage superhero. In one violent motion, he reached out, grabbed it, and tore the plastic housing from the cardboard—feeling some pleasure at the separation of the long-sealed glue. He took the little boy out and studied him closely.
Hello. Where can I guide you today? his phone asked again.
William stared at the caped figure and had no answer.
Hello. Where can I guide you today?
Something in him snapped.
“WHERE IS SHE?” he howled. “WHERE’S IRENE?”
He saw a burst of purple behind his eyelids. He thought he might throw up. And then—
Then the phone replied, in the same stiff but agreeable tone, Finding Irene.
William set the doll down and studied the spider-webbed screen of his phone. He watched a map forming behind the cracked glass. For a moment he almost believed that it might actually locate her. Eventually a picture of her old East Fourth Street apartment emerged, the address still stored in his contacts list somewhere.
He lay there cradling Aqualad in one hand, the phone in the other, thinking about the day he’d broken into that apartment. How he had felt an odd peace there among her things—pasta strainer on a hook near the kitchen, overgrown spider plant on the windowsill, a stack of magazines stolen out of the downstairs recycling bin, a blanket from the Met with a Monet print on it. Her things, without her. At first he’d thought it was just the adrenaline of being where he wasn’t supposed to be, but soon he’d realized it was something else. He was with her, without her. What did it say, that he’d always felt closest to her when she wasn’t there? In her apartment, by himself. By her side as she slept. In the hospital while the morphine carried her off in a Stygian stream. Looking at a picture of her, taken by somebody else—
Of course. He slowly got up and brushed himself off. As head-aching blots of pink stopped moving in front of his eyes, he turned to the phone and asked for the person that he knew he should have started with.
“Cobalt. Find Alisanne Des Rochers.”
It turned out that Alisanne Des Rochers, owner of a Web design company based in Paris, was prompt on e-mail. Before William had even fully pulled himself together, thrown the action figure into his pocket with the weed and the address book, she’d responded to his query, saying she was still in town and could meet him at her hotel, The Quaker, in Long Island City.
The driver who picked William up expressed mild concern for him with a perfunctory “Are you okay, sir?” before returning to his phone call in some West African–sounding language. William said nothing. He closed his eyes and did not open them again until they’d arrived.
• • •
When William stepped into the glass and steel lobby of the hotel every eye was on him. How bad did he really look? Fortunately, before the porters could swoop in on him, a woman approached him from the bar area.
“You are William Cho?�
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She wasn’t what he expected. Since he’d first seen her name written on the back of Irene’s dirty Polaroids, he’d been envisioning a regal French beauty. Leslie Caron from An American in Paris or María Casares from Les Enfants du paradis. In his mind she’d existed in black and white.
But here was Alisanne, in the somewhat-acned flesh. Thick eyebrows. Greasy, dark hair cut in a childish bob. Lips wide, flat, and pink, parted slightly, as if she were about to chew something. Her hands were blue and veiny, her nails polished black. Her nose looked as if it had been broken and then rebroken a few times for good measure. She had a wart on her neck the size of a pencil eraser with thick black hairs springing out of it. The black hood she was wearing was part of a denim coat and her black boots were laced up to her knees.
The porters looked displeased as he trudged inside, leaving sand behind on the dark carpet. He apologized, but Alisanne didn’t appear to care. The hotel seemed to be constructed of different-sized panels of glass in interlocking square frames. Some were frosted to the point of complete opacity and others were crystal clear. Behind the desk was a waterfall, flowing somehow up and not down. An enormous sculpture of a spider eating a wasp sat in the middle of an otherwise pleasant-looking garden. There were four oversize gnome statues in the mailroom. Were they part of the building decor? Or had someone ordered them? William tried not to stare into the adjacent yoga studio, where people were bending themselves into holistic pretzels.
They went wordlessly to the sixth floor, where Alisanne opened her door with a keycard and invited him to remove his wet clothes. “Take a shower. I’ll find you dry clothes. And some tea.”
William hesitated, seeing that the shower was divided from the main room only by a pane of frosted glass that didn’t reach the black-tiled floor.
“You are—not my type,” she said flatly.
Reluctantly he removed his wet pants and shirt. Alisanne dropped them into a plastic bag and ordered some tea while he showered and washed what felt like an entire sandbar from his hair. Clean and warm at last, he stepped out in a towel, and Alisanne handed him a pair of ripped black jeans and a T-shirt for a band called MALADROIT. He was a little embarrassed to find that they were almost exactly the same size.
Why We Came to the City Page 36